Mr. Niall Redmond:

The Deputy is quite right that dementia is a major issue. Currently, there are approximately 55,000 people in Ireland living with dementia and approximately 4,000 new cases per annum. One can see where this is going in the future given that we have an ageing demographic. Interestingly, this year a new model of residential care, called CareBright, opened in Bruff. It is specifically aimed at dementia. It is not quite a nursing home and not quite independent living. It is almost in between. It is largely based on models designed in the Netherlands and has been brought here as a testing model. It opened at the beginning of March, so it will be interesting to watch how that develops and to see what it brings to the table in terms of a particular model for dementia, which is particularly challenging.

From the Department of Health's perspective, we published the national dementia strategy in 2014. As part of that work we have introduced intensive home care packages for dementia largely on a trial basis. We are supporting 150 people at present. These are very intensive packages that allow people with dementia to try to live at home for as long as possible. They are also being independently evaluated by Genio in NUI Galway to try to understand their effectiveness and whether they are something we can pursue in the future in a more mainstream model. At the end of January this year 301 people had benefited from those packages since they were introduced in 2016. There is a great deal of work happening with dementia.

As a matter of interest, we will publish a mid-term review of the dementia strategy in the next couple of weeks. That will also point out some of the other work we are doing in this area. Obviously, it is broader than the issue of housing but it links closely to it as well.